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The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson

From PDC2009 Day 1: Entity Framework 4

November 17, 2009 at 6:41 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing

Lots of improvements to EF for 4.0:

  • Model-first development.
  • Lazy loading through relationships (i.e., no longer have to call Load)
  • POCO (i.e., define your own data classes against a model).
  • POCO only (i.e., define the model fully in code).
  • Code Generation options using the new T4 facility of VS 2010.
  • Testability improvements through IObjectSet
  • Can override SaveChanges
  • Better disconnected workflow (both by writing a little code and a no-code option that uses a different code generator).
  • Much better SQL (more compact, more efficient)
  • Execute arbitrary SQL
  • Easier Stored Procedures
  • Functions (a little strange how this was implemented, but now they are available).
  • Foreign Keys in the entities (no more manual interpretation of the Reference!)
  • Better Binding for forms apps and WPF

Pandelis, what do you think?

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    Pandelis wrote @ November 17th, 2009 at 7:10 pm

Most of these are glaring omissions in v1 (.NET 3.5) and will be much appreciated. It definitely seems like the current version was rushed out the door. This release addresses most of the quirks of v1 (for example no easy access to foreign keys). The ability to access native user defined functions on the database is big for me (because unlike stored procedures, they are composable), as is the ability to unit test without having to modify a database.

Any info on designer improvements, or bulk inserts?

    Robert W. Anderson wrote @ November 19th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

I talked to someone today and found:

There are designer improvements, particularly that model changes shouldn’t get paved when refreshing the model. More major changes to help make the model more navigated are planned for the future (i.e., post .NET 4).

Inserts? Aside from some small performance improvements, nope. The woman I spoke to basically asked, “how’s that working out for you?” . . . she suggested that we bypass EF and use ADO.NET for the inserts instead.

I wasn’t able to find someone who knew the answer to the GUID / SEQUENTIALGUID questions I had. That doesn’t sound promising to me, but I’ll look further.

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